ABSTRACT
Just as romantic love is not always just a hormonal shot in the dark, neither is it always simply a rational decision based purely on instrumental considerations. A handsome and successful businessman may forsake a dozen gorgeous young women and fall in love and marry a "plain Jane" because he appreciates her inner beauty. With due respect to Swami Vaswani's epilog, all romantic love is exchange and barter. People exchange our love and devotion for the love and devotion of someone else. Popular stereotypes of women portray them as being romantically impulsive in matters of the heart and easy prey for the manipulative cad. Let's take the Roper respondents at their word and explore romantic love from a psychological point of view unsullied by market considerations. Romantic love would seem to thrive best on a foundation of basic similarities around which is built an edifice of interesting and even exciting differences.
